In case you are just catching up, I created a 12 Days of Christmas Blogging challenge. The idea behind the challenge is just to give myself (and others who want to participate) some fun holiday writing prompts! If you don’t have a blog I still encourage you to participate in the 12 Days challenge on Instagram, just for fun 🙂 All you have to do is post the picture of the challenge, tag the post on my page, and blog away.

Back to the Day 2 challenge – do you prefer a real or fake Christmas tree?

In my household, we are 100% REAL Christmas tree people! I grew up in the country in Upstate New York, and honestly as a child didn’t even know that a fake tree was an option. Every year we would drive to the tree farm together and trudge through the snow to pick out the one that we felt was extra special.

Now as an adult, there is something super nostalgic about the process of picking a tree out as a family, and the smell of it sitting in the living room… something that still gives you that feeling of Christmas magic no matter your age. Involving my daughter in this has been so fun; we try to pick a local Christmas tree farm with all the good stuff (hot coco, candy canes, etc.) that will make for great memories as she grows up too.

As an environmentally conscious adult, I still have no qualms about cutting down a fresh tree every year. Tree farms plant countless ones a year to keep themselves in business, and I just planted a row of 26 firs in my back yard this past summer so I feel like that accounts for the majority of trees I have cut down in my lifetime, and there will be more planted in years to come.

So, are you a real or fake Christmas tree kind of person? For me, there is no substituting for a real one!

I love a real tree. But, the simplicity of a fake tree is pretty nice too. We just have a fairly small one (you can read about it in my Christmas post this past Monday if you haven’t already.) I do miss the smell of a real tree though! Mmmmmm….that’s the best! With my hubby deployed this year, we opted for the little tree. Next year, if we are still in Hawaii, we want to get a traditional Hawaiian Christmas tree at the tree farm 🙂

I do see that an artificial one could be easier. This year we went to a tree farm around the corner from our house and they offered to deliver the tree to us for free… they had two boys who even carried it inside for us! It was great… I will be going back there in the future for sure.

We did the real tree thing for many years when the kids were little. At some point the practicality of it all made us go artificial. We found that we could put it up earlier and it could stay up longer (no drying out issues) and we did sneeze less with the artificial tree! We went all in and got ours from Molbaks so it is really pretty as well as really expensive! But we have had it for over a decade and we all look forward to it every year. Your tree is gorgeous 🙂